


The Long Way Around

by PositivelyVexed



Category: The Hateful Eight (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Groundhog Day (1993) Fusion, Blow Jobs, Fix-It, M/M, Period-Typical Racism, Treat
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-10-30
Updated: 2017-10-30
Packaged: 2019-01-26 20:29:43
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,829
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12565576
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PositivelyVexed/pseuds/PositivelyVexed
Summary: Chris Mannix is living the same day over and over. Warren finds that a bit hard to believe.





	The Long Way Around

**Author's Note:**

  * For [scioscribe](https://archiveofourown.org/users/scioscribe/gifts).



“So you saying I shoot you right now, you’ll just wake up again tomorrow?”

White boy’s eyes slid closed, like he was explaining something very simple. “I’ll just wake up again _today._ That’s what I’m trying to tell you, major."

“It sounds like what you’re saying is it won’t make any difference to either one of us if I pull this trigger.” 

White boy flashed his teeth, cool and easy. He was either a poker player or a madman. “Sure, major, you could do that. We’ll just do this again tomorrow. It’s a fucking pain in the ass, riding across this mountain to find you first thing every morning, but now that I’ve done it a few times, it’s not so hard to do again. Or you could save us both some trouble and hear me out.” 

Warren shifted a bit in his saddle. He thought he'd heard just about enough. He'd been taking the long way to Red Rock, three dead bounties jostling along behind him like change in his pocket, when the white boy'd ridden up to him on this barren, flattened-out stretch of mountain road. Thrown his holster, gun and all, on the ground as soon as he was in Warren’s sights, and raised his hands up over his head as he slid off his horse and walked over. 

He was shivering on his knees in the snow at the moment, hands still above his head, smiling up at him a little. Warren might have taken the whole thing—white boy, lonely road, bullshit story about time travel and gunmen at Minnie's—for some over-circuitous ploy to lure him into an ambush, and he really ought to execute him over it, but he felt he owed it to Minnie to suss out whether there was any truth to that part of the story.

White boy seemed to take Warren’s silence for further license to run his mouth.

“Now I know if a gang of mean bastard killers was planning to come riding up into Minnie’s, drink her coffee and eat her candy and then murder her and her people in cold blood, you’d want to know about it. Especially if they further were going to kill a shitload of other people, you and me _very much_ included. I can help you make them sorry they ever set foot inside Minnie’s.”

“Usually when white boys with a voice like yours come looking for me by name, your interests run more towards helping me into an early grave. Hell, maybe I've killed some of your kin come up before you. What’s your name, anyhow?”

He flashed the first nervous smile in this whole exchange. 

“Now I was getting to that, major. It's, uh," he reddened up, "Chris Mannix.” 

It took a moment for it to click, like a lock sliding home.

“As in Mannix’s Marauders?”

Mannix shuffled a bit on his knees in the snow like a dumbass. “Yes sir.” Didn’t know where that ‘sir’ came from, but knowing who was wielding it made it almost funny. Funny, or something else pretty far from funny. Hell, he decided to go ahead and have a laugh. He had the fucker at gunpoint, and that was always worth some good humor.

Mannix had the good sense to look embarrassed by his name.

“I know you got no reason to trust me, my family being who we are, and me being who I am. But I’m telling the truth, and if I weren’t then I would have just given you a false name—“

“A man with your past’s got some nerve, dangling the fate of black folks in front of me, like you give a shit. Like you haven’t drank some poor woman’s coffee and then killed her yourself.”

He felt good then, the way anger usually felt good, momentarily burning away all lingering uncertainty and curiosity about just what this white boy thought he was up to.

White boy bit his lower lip, all abashed. “Never did that, major. We never fucked around with acting friendly. And if it makes you feel any better, you’ve shot me over it a few times in the past. But cross my heart, I ain’t lying about your friends being in danger. I’ve gone back a good ten, twenty times on my own trying to kill Jody and his gang of assholes myself, but I can’t do it on my own, and no one at Minnie’s believes me—“

“So I strike you as the real believe-you type?”

Mannix did laugh, kinda short and sharp. “No, sir. But, like I said, sometimes you believe the evidence in front of you. You believed me about the coffeepot.”

He felt like he was getting a headache. “And since I only have your word about what I done in some day I don’t remember, and since there ain’t any poisoned coffee around for me to judge shit by now, I guess that gets you nowhere.” The fact that he was even engaging Mannix enough to poke holes in his words was probably a sign he’d gone wrong somewhere, when by all rights and rules of vengeance Mannix ought to bleeding out into the snow, but something kept him talking rather than shooting. Amusement, maybe. It’d been a while since he’d had a white boy to bat around like a cat with a mouse.

He said as much to Mannix.

A knowing little look edged its way into Mannix’s eyes. “A white boy like Chester Charles _Smithers_?” he asked.

“Yeah, a cracker like Chester Charles Smithers.” Mannix had no cause waving that name around like he was special for knowing it. He figured renegades for being cozy and inbred enough that word got around when one of them set out to make his fortune on Warren’s head and never came home, and for them to be just smart enough to know what that meant. 

“And you did more besides to Chester Charles Smithers, didn’t you? Walked him through the snow naked and made him suck you off, I heard.”

He felt a funny kind of vertigo to hear that described to him. “That the story you boys tell yourselves? That what brought you up here? You want a taste yourself?”

“That’s the story _you_ fucking tell, major, later today, when we’re all at Minnie’s, when you're trying to rile up poor old Sandy Smithers.”

“Sandy Smithers at Minnie’s, no shit?”

Mannix scowled something fierce. “That’s not the fucking point, is it? The point is, there’s no way I could know about how you… you had your way with that old general’s son unless you told me.” He had pinked up a bit around the cheeks as he finished.

Lucky guess, maybe. Maybe. “What else I tell you?”

A small smile. “I know about the Lincoln Letter.” 

“The Lincoln Letter isn’t any kind of classified information. Word of mouth getting around about me’s going to tell you that much.”

“I know it’s a fucking fake.” That got Warren’s goat, and it must have shown for a moment, because white boy leaned back on his knees and heels and looked up at him. “Now I know that don’t prove anything either. Hell, I figured that one out the very first day, no traveling back in time needed. But major, you’ve told me things about that letter. Things you ain’t never told anyone else. How you’ve rewritten it three times now—got some horse thief’s blood all over the first time out, I think, and the second got soaked and fell apart when you forded a river, chasing down some highwaymen outside of, uh, Durango.”

It occurred to Warren that he didn’t like the sensation of some white boy knowing things about Warren he should have no earthly way of knowing. His fingers felt slick on the trigger.

“You wrote the first one in a week in a hotel in Casper when you were laid up with a broken leg. But you like this copy the best, cause it’s the one where you thought to add that touch about ol’ Mary Todd. You want more, major? The name of the first man you ever killed—"

Warren made a quick motion with his gun, and Mannix closed his mouth with an audible snap. 

“How you so sure I didn’t tell anyone else all that?” The hell of it was, he _hadn’t_ , and it gave him a funny kind of queasy feeling to think on that. Nor would he have told Mannix, no matter how many fucking times that asshole lived the day over.

“You told me so.”

“Yeah, and the Lincoln Letter proves I’m a hell of a liar.”

White boy just frowned like he hadn’t thought of that, and that gave Warren some room to think, some semblance of the upper hand he could hold while he turned the situation over.

“You might have trailed me, asking around. Trying to learn about my past. Tracked me when I wasn't looking.”

Though that seemed like a stretch, given he’d have bet his ass the boy in front of him had no wits, no calm, and no stealth. And Warren would have bet his life there was no one to ask.

Mannix was thinking along similar lines. “Now, major, you know that don't make sense. There’s no way I’m going to sneak around following Major Marquis Warren without him knowing.”

Fuck his flattery, fuck him, and fuck, he was right.

“Maybe you can read minds.” Warren didn’t really like that thought any better.

Mannix just scoffed and looked up above, holding still for so long that Warren wondered if he really had gone stupid. Then he pointed to where a shadow had swooped by them overhead. “Now you mark me, major, that hawk’s going to dive down between those trees in a second, and it’s going come back up with a mouse in its mouth.”

“That’s an eagle, dumbass.” 

But he wasn’t wrong about the rest of it. Lucky guesses kept piling up. He was starting to feel an uncanny feeling in the pit of himself, like the world had suddenly turned slantwise.

Mannix was on a fucking roll, though. “You see that tree over there, by that cluster of rocks? With that long bough on the side facing us? A whole shitton of snow’s about to slide off it any second now.”

Warren let that shit go on for a while, waiting, then just hoping, for him to be proved wrong and show himself for a liar, but he wasn't.

Finally, Mannix got tired of being right, even though it had to be a new sensation for him, and turned to him, grinning. “How do you think I know all this, major, unless I’ve chased you down here before and saw it with my own two eyes?” 

He avoided the question. “So how many times you say you went after me, after it belatedly occurred to you to do something about those folks at Minnie’s being murdered?”

“Thirty-seven.”

“Thirty-seven? You’re that unconvincing?”

“Some of that was just to collect information, like so,” he gestured grandly towards the trees and sky, “The rest of it was just chasing a bad strategy." And he settled into an expression that was probably what passed for thoughtful with him. "I never tried the truth on you before now. You believe that, major? Not about living the same day. I started out thinking I could lie, come up with something easier to believe than the truth that would get you to come with me to Minnie’s. But you always saw right through me. ”

“Yeah? What I do to your lying ass?”

“Shot me, mostly.” He tapped himself right between the eyes, grinning, “Right here. Sent me right back to start over. It got to be a pain the ass.”

“All that, and you still figured me for your best ticket off this ride.” Wasn’t sure when he’d started talking to Mannix like he believed him. 

“I figure if anyone knew the way to outsmart this day, it’d be you.”

Something about the way he said it got at something in him, even as he thought, _fuck you, you don't know me._

He held up his gun, drew back the hammer, watched Mannix’s face fall. 

Which was really, he realized, all he’d wanted out of doing it. Seeing that dumbass thrown off balance. Prove there were still some things about how today was going to go he didn’t know.

“Get up.”

Mannix came up out of the snow stiff and unsteady on his legs, wet spots climbing up his knees. There was a funny kind of twitch in his stomach. He thought of Chester Charles Smithers, and then pushed the thought aside. 

The world being the way it was, Warren couldn’t countenance the existence of any higher power that took an interest in setting evil right, which was Mannix’s dumbshit explanation for why he was here and why he had to save Minnie’s Haberdashery. That just raised a whole host of questions a college of philosophers might be eager to answer, but Warren couldn’t square with anything he knew. (Though if such a power was in the habit of sending back folks of Mannix’s caliber to do its bidding, that would explain quite a few things about the state of the world.)

It seemed just barely more plausible that Mannix had got some kind of curse laid on him, Sisyphus-like. If such curses existed, Mannix did seem like the type to incur one. But Warren didn’t really like that any better, since it still left him entertaining the faintest possibility that Mannix was living and dying the same day over and over, which meant Warren was too, just without the benefit of knowing it. 

“You promise to stop trying to convince me of shit, I’ll tell you what. Every bounty hunter in the territories has memorized Jody goddamn Domingre’s face off his handbill. I’ll go with you to Minnie’s, and I see him there with my own two eyes, I’ll kill him for you, and anyone he’s partnered up with. And I collect the bounty. You call that a deal?”

“I sure say I do.”

But then Mannix got twitchy, like there was one more thing to tell.

“Hey, major, about those dead bodies you got? The reason you always end up on that stagecoach? Your horse can’t make it, racing the weather and pulling all that weight behind you.”

Warren’s eyebrows shot right back up. 

Mannix raised his hands. “You’ve got me wrong, I don’t want them, major. I’ll help you bury them so no one finds them till you come back for to collect later. But there’s no way your horse survives this with them along for the ride.”

He was back to feeling distrustful. “So tell me something. You ever double-cross me and go over to Daisy Domergue’s side in all those times?”

“What the fuck kind of question is that?”

“The kind I want answered.”

Mannix went pale, and he thought the same thought he’d had with Mannix kneeling before him, that there was something perversely appealing about this asshole, or at least about fucking with him. “Now major, that wasn’t any kind of thing. As a total percentage of the times I _haven’t_ stabbed you in the back, it’d round down to an even zero, and that’s a fact. I must have sided with you a dozen times before I even considered it, died with you too, but when the day keeps sending you back to the start like a schoolteacher telling you to do your work over again, and you start to wonder if you didn’t bet on the wrong horse—"

He cut him off before Mannix could muster any more mixed metaphors into service. “ _What happened_ , white boy?”

Mannix chewed his lip. “I killed you.”

There was something about how he got good and shamefaced as he said it that wasn’t entirely unpleasant to look at. 

“I wished I hadn’t, the look on your face… and Daisy Domergue fucking stabbed me in the back with an actual knife afterward if it makes you feel better,” he offered, and it kind of did, but not by enough. “Probably got real pleased with herself, thinking she was getting off the mountain in the morning. Little did _she_ know.” 

Mannix frowned again, and for the first time hugged himself like he was noticing the cold. 

Warren didn’t answer, which just seemed to work Mannix up. “I know I made the wrong choice, major, you don’t have to tell me. Anyway it ain’t fair of you to hold a grudge about that. You've shot me so many times by now, major. You done all _kinds_ of things to me.”

“Yeah? What kinds?”

Chris Mannix seemed, impossibly, to lose his ability to speak. 

Warren let the question slide for a moment, or at least decided to let Mannix think he had. “I never had reason to believe the universe is in the habit of getting things right, or giving folks do-overs when they fuck up. I don’t believe it gives a damn about any of us, I certainly don’t believe it gives a fuck about your _moral improvement._ So when you tell me I’m caught up in your own endless fucking Pilgrim’s Progress, I’m going to take exception to that.”

“I’m not asking you to like it, major," he said mildly, "I don’t like it myself.”

“And I don’t like hearing things been done to me that I don’t know about. So when I ask you about what’s transpired between us, I expect full honesty. You got me?”

Mannix nodded, looking like he really hadn’t considered how this whole thing'd look, from Warren’s point of view. “Sure, major. I get you.”

“I ever make you suck my cock?” he asked, and Mannix blanched white as the snow. “I done it before, as you yourself said.” Mannix licked dry lips, and for a moment he looked like he'd forgotten about Minnie’s, forgotten about bounties, forgotten about everything. But it wasn’t fear that seemed to dry out his mouth and make him stupid. 

“Remember, I ask you a question, you give me an answer. That’s how this works.”

Mannix nodded.

“Yeah,” he whispered. Then he straightened up, grinned like they were cozy co-conspirators. “You did, major.”

It wasn’t a surprise, but it went through him like electricity anyhow.

He was still holding the gun. At some point, he’d lowered it without really even thinking about it, but now he raised it up again to Mannix’s head. Mannix’s eyes slipped closed, got a stupid eager look on his face. 

“How was it?”

For a moment, there was nothing but Mannix’s ragged breathing, traveling clear as a bell on a day as cold as today.

“You tasted real good, major,” he said at last. “Best thing I ever had in my mouth.” His voice hitched a bit. “Wanted to do it again ever since, but it never worked out that way. Every time I went back trying to—you wouldn’t.” 

Warren was kind of tickled by that. Needy white boy trying desperately to get a suck of his cock, and him not giving him what he wanted. He liked it a lot.

“Want it again, now, don’t you? With me knowing exactly how long you’ve been wanting it?” 

Mannix’s jaw muscles got tight, like they were trying to hold something back, but then he clicked out a nod. “Yeah.”

He drew back and put his gun away. “That’s it. That’s all the questions I had.”

Mannix’s eyes snapped open. “What?”

“Got to get going if we want to get Minnie’s in time, don’t we?”

Mannix looked mad enough to spit for a moment, but he nodded, reached out his hand like he expected Warren to help him up, and for some reason, Warren did. When he’d hauled Mannix to his feet, he didn’t let go, just grasped his wrist tighter and pulled him in close. 

“Don’t make me regret this,” he said softly.

“No sir.” He studied those buckteeth and wide, darting eyes. Warren felt something. “This goes south, you find me again.” He didn’t like that there wouldn’t be shit Warren could do about it if he didn’t. But something about Mannix seemed to want to be told. Seemed to crave it.

"Yessir."

When Mannix got his hand back, he brushed his coat off and straightened his hat. “That was always the fucking _plan_ , black major.”

He didn’t like framing it in his head like he believed Mannix, exactly, so he spun it around: he trusted himself. He lived by his ability to size up a man: peg his name, his intentions—and if he thought Mannix was exactly who he said he was, then who was Warren to second-guess himself? 

Once he’d made up his mind, he found everything just sort of slotted into place. It was easy to take ownership of the idea of killing men who threatened Minnie’s people and Minnie’s home, that much was obvious. He didn’t need Mannix to tell him that was the thing to do.

They ended up unloading the bodies out of sight, spreading the snow out over them deep enough they’d stay unfound for a few days, especially with a blizzard on the way, next to an boulder he knew by sight. 

They worked together better than he expected, but he kept getting distracted, thinking of Mannix, red-faced and knees soaked through with snow: not an intolerable look on him. He didn’t regret leaving Mannix high and dry (very high, by the bulge in his trousers) but there was no denying it had got him hard too, and looking at him now, he sort of wished he had followed through instead.

But he hadn’t been wrong about them being short on time.

When they started out after socking away the bodies like layaway packages, there was really no denying that Lash moved a hell of a lot easier. Warren could feel the difference in every step he took. He was starting to think they would make it there with time to spare; Mannix was swearing up and down the stagecoach got in at noon, and he was plotting out who was gonna take who, being particular on the subject of some asshole named Joe Gage, when Mannix’s horse threw a shoe, and they lost nearly a half hour prising the nails out of his hooves so he could walk again. By the time Minnie’s came into view, looking smaller and more lonesome than he remembered, there was already a red stagecoach out front.

“ _Fuck_ , major.”

They didn’t wait. They moved together, like they had practiced this all their lives, and he figured Mannix for almost good at this sort of thing as they dismounted and crept to the door. He had got that tense, rock-hard feeling in his gut when bloodshed was near, where everything moved slower. They stood by the door, and he took a moment to appreciate the way Mannix waited for the nod from him.

Then they burst inside and fuck if there weren’t four men drinking coffee with Minnie’s people, one of them looking like the very picture of Jody Domingre. Didn’t know the other three from Adam, but that was good enough for him. If that hadn’t been, the way they drew their guns like they already had their hands on them would have clued him in quick. 

Everything had got quiet for a moment when the two of them blew in, but Mannix took aim at the big ugly fellow standing by Judy, and then things got noisy.

The firefight lasted all of thirty seconds, and at some point in the lull between bullets when they’d shot two of the bastards down and two were still standing, Warren moved deeper into the room and stepped between Jody and General Sandy Smithers, who sat in a chair by the fire, which was a risk, with Sweet Dave right behind _him_ , but what was life without risks? When the dust settled a minute later, the Domingre Gang was dead, and there was only one crossfire casualty. Smithers had caught a bullet from Jody's gun through the chair that had been meant for Warren. He’d watched that old man’s face change when he’d caught it, locked eyes with him the moment it happened, and then he’d finished Jody a moment later. Fuck if it wasn’t the best he’d felt in ages. He turned to see Mannix put a final bullet in the still-twitching body of the big one, presumably Joe Gage, and to see Minnie and Gemma come up from where they’d ducked behind the counter.

He holstered his gun. “Sorry for the bloodshed. You know I hate to bring that shit inside, but circumstances being what they were, we felt we had to act now.” And he explained the situation as best as he could, giving the impression that Mannix, the new sheriff of Red Rock, had stumbled upon word about the gang planning to use Minnie’s as an ambush point and enlisted the local bounty hunter for back-up. He concluded with a sweep of his hand around the place, taking in broken jars and blood creeping across the floor. “We’ll clean this shit up.”

Minnie was shaking her head like he was lucky she liked him. “Think my heart will be racing for a few days, but I’ve survived worse,” though she couldn’t keep from surveying Jody’s corpse a bit sadly, like it was a shame Jody'd had to spoil what had been a nice time with that evil. But she just said, “And I’d feel more comforted if I didn’t know how long it’s been since you’ve done any kind of cleaning yourself. I hope the new sheriff’s a bit more useful on that score.”

Mannix had sidled over to Warren and was staring at Smithers. “You fucking bastard,” he muttered, low enough that no one else heard them. “You did that on purpose.”

Warren ignored him, and Mannix didn’t seem so put out about it that he wasn’t helping himself to jellybeans and introducing himself to Sweet Dave a moment later.

The tension didn’t pass so easily for the others, not being inured to bloodshed, and chance to kill Smithers with full plausible deniability aside, he wished they hadn’t let the gang get into Minnie’s at all. It made more work, and there was something ugly about seeing that shit breech Minnie’s doors, sully her floors and walls. But still, better outcome than it could have been. Better outcome than they’d apparently had.

The next hour or so were spent moving bodies and making the place nice again. Minnie lost any lingering wistfulness she’d been feeling when she and Gemma opened up the luggage and discovered mainly guns and knives and lye. Judy, who’d always had the hardest time with believing anything bad of anyone, took her leave, smile a bit tarnished, but she managed throw Warren a jaunty salute as he left.

They got all the bodies stacked up out back, biggest pay-out Warren’d ever seen in his life, and Smithers too, who wouldn’t earn him a penny but felt like restitution of a different sort.

After all that, and after Minnie got a round of shots in them, he had dragged Mannix out to the stables to put the horses away properly. When they were done, he pushed him back up against the stall, got his hand around his neck, thumb pressing the hollow of his throat. He wanted him, but there was something stuck in his craw.

“Real helpful,” he murmured, so close to his ear Mannix’s hair tickled his lips. 

“What?” Mannix said, heart pounding in his throat, eyes unfocused.

“You, the helpful type who’s friendly with black folks. Boy who rode with the Mauraders all those years. You didn’t start out sirring me first time we met, and don’t try to tell me otherwise, Chris Mannix.”

“I did that the very first time we died together, and you can take that to the fucking bank." Eyes got a bit reflective. "As for the other stuff, I can’t very well have gone through the things I have, as many times as I have, and not been changed a bit by it, major,” he said. “Hell, even you might find yourself rethinking some things under those circumstances.” He licked his lips. “But yeah, I was different to you that very first time.”

“Can’t be any kind of trust when we’ve got a hell of asymmetric acquaintance going at the moment. So tell me how you were when we first met.”

“Jesus, it's not like I fucking tried to...to kill you. I… I said some things that could be classed as disrespectful. Called you out on the fucking Lincoln Letter.”

Warren shifted his hand around his throat just enough to feel Mannix squirm. The fucked up truth was, Warren liked him more this way, this long roundabout way they’d taken to where they were, the asshole who’d gone from calling him nigger to calling him sir that very first night, but took longer to admit to why. Someone would probably say there was something wrong with him for that, but Warren’d never pretended to be a man of right and proper inclinations.

Then he was done listening to Mannix talk and done waiting and he pushed Mannix down to his knees. Let him bare his throat, nice and red with Warren's fingerprints still circling it, as he looked up at him.

“You been wanting this again for a long time, Mannix.” Spit out that surname onto the stable floor with him, along with the mud and hay and horseshit.

Mannix swallowed. “That's the truth, major." 

Glittering eyes tracking Warren, like he was scared at any second he'd call it off, his hands wandered up to Warren’s belt and worked it loose, bit his gloves off when he couldn't get his fingers to manage the buckle, and Warren braced himself against the rush of cold air as Mannix got him out of his pants, but he didn’t have to bear it long cause Mannix's mouth was on him in an instant, and he was eager and warm. Taking him all in, like he needed to prove something. It might have been the best mouth his cock had ever been in, although that might just be because he was killing drunk, and working his way towards drunk drunk.

He kept his hands in Mannix's hair, scraped his thumb along the cold shell of his ear. “You tasted real good,” Mannix had said, and damn if he didn’t look like he was savoring it, not in any kind of dainty way, but like he couldn’t get enough of it. Like he’d been starved for it.

He had to bite back a moan, as Mannix worked his tongue, wanted to keep him wondering if he was doing good enough. After a while he said fuck it to whatever Mannix wondered, and gave himself over to it, thrusting harder and sloppier than he usually did. Mannix got his fingers hooked through Warren’s belt loops like he was afraid of getting bucked off, and hung on, letting Warren set the pace. He thought about Mannix on his knees in the snow, whether he'd been on his knees the first time and where they'd been, how Mannix had wanted it in between, probably been so desperate for it he'd jerked himself off soon as he woke up to the same old day, and that's how he came. 

Afterwards, he got Mannix up and on his feet, hands up against the wall, sealed himself tight up against Mannix’s back like they were two bricks laid together, and stroked him hard and fast. Mannix bucked up against him, ass grinding so hard back against him he almost thought he'd go and get wood again. If he was younger, he would have. After Mannix came with a string of startled curses, he slumped back against Warren until he pushed him off, and Warren got another look at him as he staggered away, lips wet and raw. Mannix pulled his coat tight around him and tried to scrub his face clean with the palms of his hands.

“I just hope you didn't fuck things up by getting Smithers killed, major. Cosmically speaking, I mean...."

Hell of a mood killer.

“Then I guess I’m going to keep fucking your chances up, because that was too good a chance to pass up. From my perspective, this was a pretty good day. Killed some white men, fucked another one, got to taste Minnie’s cooking, and I’m forty thousand dollars richer for it. Seems to me it wasn’t so bad for you either. I’d relive today.”

“You'd feel differently, if you actually had to do it,” Mannix huffed, clapping his hands together, suddenly cold now that he didn’t have his hard-on to distract him. But then he leaned against the stall, looking thoughtful. “I should have gone to you and told you the truth from the start. Would have been better, having you in on it.”

“Probably would have been smarter, yeah. But you do the best you can with the brains you got.”

They ended up bedding down for the night in the cellar, because upstairs was already crowded, and only got more so when the overland coach arrived, and John Ruth was many things but quiet he was not, and Daisy Domergue was particularly vocal in her disappointment to find her blood kin laid out dead behind the woodshed.

“It’s been something,” Warren said, for lack of anything better to say as they laid together on a narrow cot, watching the lights above them dim down one by one through the slats in the floorboards. “I’d say it’s been nice knowing you, but…”

“'But you expect we’ll wake up here tomorrow,' or 'but there’s nothing nice about knowing me?'”

“Little of both, I guess.”

Mannix smirked in the dim light, like that’s just what he’d expected him to say. “I reckon I _will_ see you tomorrow, major, one way or another.”

_

The next morning he woke up to a cold grey cellar and the feel of Mannix patting him disbelievingly. He swatted his hand the fuck away, but he came right back a few more times persistent as a fly, and Warren had just about reached for his pistol when Mannix hopped out of bed, started wandering the cellar, touching everything in sight, then spun around like he couldn't believe it was real and grinned at him. Did a dumb jig, even. He decided any actor good enough to fake that kind of enthusiasm wouldn't have played it so over the top in the first place.

"Guess you were telling the truth,” he said, pulling the covers up around him. “Now shut the fuck up. I want to sleep until I smell breakfast.”


End file.
